


Trust

by anoyo



Category: Tokyo Babylon
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-05
Updated: 2008-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:42:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/anoyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Subaru considers the ways in which his love for Seishirou has destroyed both his trust in the man, and his hope for trust in anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust

**Author's Note:**

> Day five in the 25 Days of Christmas. I'm really awful at writing angst/darkfic that isn't introspective, and I really had a hard time with this challenge. I don't think that this fic is up to par, to be honest, but I couldn't stand to do it again. I guess it just isn't my writing style at all. Apologies! (At least, Arashi, you have four fics, so you have to like at least one of them!) Basically, huge warning for this being stream-of-consciousness and not particularly good. Beta'd by [Zanzou](http://zanzou-chan.livejournal.com) even though she doesn't really like Subaru. XD! Written for [Arashi](http://efeitokaminari.livejournal.com), for her prompt: Seishirou/Subaru to the song "Betrayed Me" by Adema. Originally posted [here](http://anoyo.livejournal.com/129533.html).

Subaru had known, since he was young, that the world wasn't a perfect place. He'd even known that, sometimes, the world downright sucks, that people themselves suck, and that he might as well just buck up and take it.

Really, truly, he knew all of that, but there was a decided difference between knowing and _knowing_. Cliché, yeah, but even clichés had origins in truth, didn't they? How else would they come to be? A foundation in reality.

And right about now? Subaru wished he could kick that foundation a few times; maybe the pain in his foot would distract him from the similarly clichéd pain elsewhere. A pain so acute that it stopped him dead in his tracks, lungs seizing, blinding light, ringing ears as he became unable to focus on anything else.

To make it go away, Subaru would do almost anything. Almost. Sometimes, the only way to turn it off was to step back, look at it as though it was all the story of someone else's life. Then, without fail, he would come back to the sad series of events, one betrayal after another, by both his beloved and the other of his own self.

When he wallowed, and wallow he did, he could see the train wreck that was his life to date: his parents dead, killed by a woman he later found out was the mother of the man he fell in love with; the man he loved injured protecting him; the man he loved revealing the secret of his own betrayal, his lust for Subaru's own blood and his selfish bet; the sacrifice selfishly made by his sister; the one he loved taking advantage of that sacrifice; the one he loved not holding to his word in regard to the promise made through sacrifice. Sometimes, Subaru even took a moment to applaud his own courage, his own ability to keep going through the things that should have taken him down completely.

Then, other times, he remembered the source of all of this: his own soul.

His parents murdered for sport, and an inkling of his existence. His sister dead for his weakness, and inability to deal with the hardships life could produce. Everything together caused by a bet, a stupid bet he had been there to make and ultimately failed.

The bet had been designed for him to lose, Subaru knew that. He had not been meant to win, and even if he had, he doubted Seishirou would have accepted it, or told him that he had. Designed to lose, and yet Subaru felt the failure deeply within himself. His fault, something he'd done wrong, or hadn't done at all. Only because he hadn't done something, that one magical thing, had he lost the bet.

Caused everything.

Maybe he could have moved on, gotten over it, and maybe he could have finally forgiven himself. Become stronger.

But he was still in love. Despite it all, the feelings that had started as affection, an association between the man and the animals he kept, and rapidly grown into sheer, unadulterated love still echoed within him. Each echo, each repetition, each memory slammed into him, shattering whatever passage he had built for himself.

His mind screamed his idiocy, telling him not to trust, not to keep his betrayer, the murderer of his innocence, within his heart. Screamed for him to come to his senses, much as Hokuto had before he had allowed her to die.

And, perhaps, he was allowing his mind, too, to die.

Long since had he decided that as long as his heart beat for this man, it did not beat at all. He could not allow it. If he could only love this man, then love could not be. Was not real, to the world or just to him; could not be allowed to be real. If all his soul went to the destroyer, then it did not exist, and neither did he.

If he didn't exist, then it didn't matter, did it? What he did, who he saved, what he accomplished; none of it mattered. If it didn't matter, then he could simply follow his desires.

Even if his desires were wrong, so wrong. Even if following his desires was betraying her memory, their memory, his own soul.

But it didn't matter. Nothing did. Not even these thoughts he had, lying awake at night; these decisions, ultimatums, despondent beliefs.

There were times when logic stepped a foot in the door, mind resurrected, and he wondered that if nothing mattered, then why did he care? Truly, would he care if it didn't matter at all? Somewhere, somehow, did he still exist? The Subaru he would recognize in a mirror, that Hokuto might recognize as he passed through the gates of Heaven, if Heaven was where he was headed?

Times like these, Subaru would begin to feel something, a burning sensation deep within his core. It would burn, boil, stir, sending color to the world in flashes, clear thoughts to his mind. It whispered to him,

"Is this the real you?"

"Is this the real world?"

"Can you really accept this world?"

"Do you really need forgiveness?"

"Is absolution necessary to do what's needed?"

"If you have the strength to do what's needed, can you truly survive through sitting back and doing nothing?"

"The world is beautiful. Just remember."

When the voice whispered, and the heart began to envelop him, Subaru would sit up, eyes wide. He knew it was true, real, what was truly him. Why couldn't he get to it? Why couldn't he quite reach it? But that wasn't quite true, was it? Every time he felt it, it came closer, moved further into reach.

And every time he felt it, he also felt the presence next to him, darker, lighter, the other side of the coin. Sometimes his mirror, sometimes his shadow.

As though the feeling Subaru had was real, tangible, visible, every time Subaru felt it, Seishirou would wake, smile, and say, "Maybe."

Then sleep came, deep and dark, but somehow -- it called for tomorrow.


End file.
